Also, huge shout out to Facebook for keeping track of what I look at. You remind me while I scroll through my feed that I should come back to shopping via cart at Forever 21. This wine thermos had to have been sent to me from the magical Amazon advertising gods. Sending me countless emails, on all the deals that are going on TODAY ONLY. So, naturally I check it out and while I fall into their marketing scheme, I find myself two-timing with Amazon, the other culprit to my guilty affair."The way I see it, Cape Town is a blessing and a curse because you don't need anyone to make you feel alive, happy or fulfilled. It really is an exercise in sales, where miscalculating your value or the market's interest could cost you in receding hairlines and awkward dates.In my case my avatar was "surfyogi", the adventurous free spirit who is "already in love with life but open to new possibilities". Well travelled and adventurous, surfyogi is a thirtysomething girl who knows what she wants – "I like a passionate, adventurous man who has a great sense of humour" – but keeps herself open to new possibilities – "I am not sure I have an ideal man.The men in my life keep on surprising and challenging me, and I like to keep it that way." Creating a profile And just in case she gets pigeonholed as a jock looking for her iron man, she throws in a piece of prose to hopefully capture a few creative souls."I hope to make you laugh, to inspire you to be more courageous and adventurous, to live life fearlessly and freely and to never stop asking why? And in return I hope you do the same for me." On any given day surfyogi could have been "culture vulture" or "creative guru".Soon, looking became winking, winking became hot-listing, hot-listing became e-mailing, and e-mailing became seeing other people. Unlike me, she stopped checking her profile soon after we met.There was no official breakup; I just didn't return calls as quickly, started canceling dates with her so I could try out new potential matches, and eventually we drifted apart. None of them has quite lived up to OFM..there's someone better out there, right?

We started seeing each other regularly — quickly moving from making out in my car to doing much more in my bedroom — and talked on the phone every day. Except for this: I still checked my profile once, twice, three times a day. Yes, OFM listened, but what if someone else listened better?Use these tips to help navigate the realm of onlinedating.The reward at the end could very well be meeting that someone special you've been looking for.In hindsight, surfyogi might have thrown in a few more "sensitive" photos, pictures of her playing games with cute children or engaging with animals and nature, all firm favourites on the onlinedating circuit.Of course, creating the persona and making a checklist of the ideal man was the fun part.

With so many new "opportunities" out there — with the illusion that a life-changing upgrade was just a click away — I couldn't maintain my focus on our relationship.